If This Happens, Austin Will Not Be Joining Newcastle

QPR seem to be working on how they can protect their valuable asset called Charles Austin, because as things stand at the moment, Charlie will be available to talk to clubs in January, because his current contract runs out next summer, when he will become a free agent.

So it’s not surprising that QPR are trying to get Charlie to sign a new deal, that will mean QPR can still ask for a big transfer fee if the player leaves QPR for a PL club in the next year.

Charlie Austin – will he sign new deal at QPR?

Not one club were willing to pay the £15M QPR were asking for him in the summer, and some of that reticence was due to some injuries Austin has picked up over the last few years, which include a shoulder injury.

The Mirror are reporting QPR are willing to insert a buy-out clause in a new contract if the player will only sign it.

But that may not be good for Charlie – for one thing it depends on what the buy-out clause amount is.

If it’s £15M no club will come in for him – if it’s about half that amount then clubs like Newcastle, West Ham and Leicester may be interested – but maybe not.

The other thing is that Charlie will forgo a big signing-on fee if clubs have to pay a transfer fee for him, whether that’s in January or next summer, and that’s the situation if he signs a new QPR deal.

A new contract is very good for QPR, but not so good for Charlie Austin, and we’d be very surprised if he signs a new deal at QPR.

But Charlie is also loyal, and he had this to say in the Mail this week about not getting a big summer move:

“I’m not disappointed.” “It’s a decision I’ve taken, with my family and agent. If the move happened, it was going to be big but it wasn’t something I was going to rush in to.”

“I didn’t want the club to be pushed on me.” “I spoke to Les Ferdinand (the Director of Football) and told him if the move was not right then I wasn’t going.”

“But I also knew he had to do everything to get the best for QPR.” “I told him if I was here on September 2, I’d be giving 100% to help the club get promotion. That is the goal now.”

Nothing from Charlie there about a new deal.

Once his agent has a talk with him, we’d be very surprised if he signs any new deal at QPR, and if he does we doubt Newcastle would be interested in signing him.

Ian Toon
“I haven’t been around but was surprised reading through the blog just how much negativity exists following the close of the window. ”

People are entitled to be suspicious, cynical and withhold positive judgement regardless of whether we welcomed the new signings or not. We will wait and see. Toon fans have been diappointed more often than not by the current owner. Why shouldn’t we reserve judgement ? We don’t look like a top ten, let alone top eight side at the moment do we ?

Prodigy
Christ bud ur gonna be in for a poor season if u expect last season tail end to carry on! West Ham were crap end of last season and now they have defensive mistakes all over the place and a certain love for red cards

We’re not all on board Ian’s boat it seems. There’s only room for the barefooted garland wearing revellers no room at all for anyone hanging on to their shoes in case they have to do some serious walking when they land.

If Carroll is fit Ed can alternate between Austin & Carroll to the Toon stories 😀
Seriously if Carroll is in the squad it’s worth putting Williamson on the bench – whatever you think about him he has always handled Carroll pretty well certainly better than Colo can.

Just been catching up. What a muppet wrighty can be. For one, since when have we, as fans, been anything but biased? Not just Newcastle, but all fans? We saw it as a harsh red card and responded. Fans at games seldom take a ballanced view anyway – players too, come to that. Cue the gentle applause and mumbled hear hear’s. Didn’t like it eh? Good. Now you’re getting the point. It’s called ‘home advantage’. That’s how SJP used to be like and should be like every home game. Make visiting players as uncomfotable as possible and they’ll likely make mistakes. But really? The FA should step in and muzzle us? I seldom revert to wholesome language on here, but seriously. Ian Wright. What a knobhead. 😉

Tsunki-
Last October and November we picked up 40% of our points gained for the whole season. Pardew left us after we had beaten Everton and in 9th position in the PL. Pardew wasn’t the one who appointed Carver.
However, given the number of posters on here who claimed the only reason Pardew had a good spell was because he finally did what they had been saying all season. Maybe Ashley should have given the job to a collective of the usual suspects.

Martoon, you beat me to it marra. 🙂 Willo has ALWAYS had Carroll in his pocket every game they’ve faced each other and under the ‘horses for courses’ rule, if Carroll plays, so should Willo. He’s the only centre back who can get anywhere near Carroll on crosses and has done so in previous games. Has Carroll ever scored against us whilst Willo marked him? Not sure he has. Can’t see Carroll starting, but if he’s even on the bench, so should Willo be imo.

With regards to Mr Wright I personally didn’t have issue with the sending off. It was his overall performance which was poor. We were penalised at almost every foul with a yellow card rightly or wrongly. However, some arsenal players were immune to cards like the deliberate hand ball and other persistent fouls. That coquelin could’ve had three or four yellow cards.
As for Mr austin news this morning that he didn’t want to come to us I can’t see where it says that in his comments. By established pl clubs I think the offers he referred to was Bournemouth and Leicester as they were the only clubs that bid for him!

Much as on try to lay it on with a trowel, the fact is most people have been prepared to give the club some credit.
It just doesn’t suit your score-settling agenda to acknowledge it.
So you persist in your talentless inability to invent a catchphrase that isn’t ploddingly awful and repeating until it becomes the more repetitive thing about your increasingly samey posts.
The people with the real fixation on Ashley are, in my view, touchy hero-worshippers who believe he has splendidly hard-line views and would make a jolly decent fist of sorting out all the country’s ills.

Tsunki- I had to revert. You could argue that given Ashley’s lack of financial ambition that Pardew took us as far as he reasonably could. Pardew was “successful” at Newcastle. For me Cabaye was the most influential player in Pardew’s time particularly with the French contingent and his sale without a comparable replacement flawed our attempts to contest a top four spot. Some investment in the team at that time could well have had us kicking upwards instead of stagnating. But selling our best player in January and not replacing him sent out a message to the other players that the club lacked ambition.
Furthermore, Pardew constantly withstood massive criticism and flack that should have been directed at Ashley. This did nothing to take his job of managing the players any easier. I would suggest this was the general outside nufc view of his time at the toon. Although clearly he remains an unpopular figure within our fan base.

For me It was no mean feat managing the toon. A club that for 60 years has not won a domestic pot to pee in. Mind losing to the mackems so often does stick in the craw.

Pardew was happy with his lot which is what stuck in most fans craw. I distinctly remembering him dedicate the home win against Chelsea to Mikey after being completely hung out to dry in the transfer window that summer.

Strange in football how many times the posts get moved. This is nothing more than an observation and shouldn’t be viewed as criticism aimed at ANYBODY. My observation is this: a banner was touted as exactly what the complaint was. That is: we don’t demand a team that wins, we demand a club that tries – or something very close to that. We’re all very reasonable and that’s not too much to ask for is it? Not at all. It’s spot on. And yet…. So, the club removes the coaching staff and brings in much better people to replace them. Ashley admits he got things wrong and steps back from football matters, putting up instead, a board to decide transfers etc. He stumps up £50m now, with a promise of a further £100 over the next year. We start the rebuilding by buying four very talented players who are all first teamers, whilst greatly improving the play of footballers who previously looked pants. The club also targets cup success, another wrong that HAD to be put right. Imho, that is a club that is trying to put right the terrible
wrongs of the recent past. In other words, a club that is trying. All we asked for, right? Now I’m reading, ‘yes, they’ve done that, but we’re still bottom after four whole games and we haven’t won a game yet…’ so now we need a new banner that says ‘scub that, we demand a team that wins after all’. 🙂 Just a bit of fun, don’t take it personal.

Ian Toon @37 – Sometimes I was put in the Pardew lover camp but my point was always that he was not as bad a manager as some made out on here.
However I think the reason he was disliked so much was because of the way he spoke up for Ashley – yes Ashley was his employer but he could have said nothing either way. Plus he had good times but he also had some appalling runs not to mention his record against the makems. The final straw for most was his behaviour against Hull & Man City!

Macca said it in an interview matey. It was part of the plan he signed up to – probably why he and Cathro signed up. The plans that really excited him? It’s been widely reported mr monkey, where have you been? 🙂

Hasn’t the goalpost that has moved the farthest been the one that defended that bad-temperedly attacked any criticisism of the old order, and is now flaying anything but total joy with the new one?
A new Ashley that spends money, goes for cups, and communicates with fans would be MY Ashley, not the Ashley of those who loved the idea of him sticking it to the scruffy mob from his lofty perch.

I’m not sure about everyone else but the final straw for me was the 0-6 and 0-3 drubbings against the Lpool and the mackems, I had actually defended him and sympathised for him after I thought he had been badly let down, it became increasingly clearer that he was fully complicit in Mikeys plans for medicocrity. We have heard since from Bobby Moncur that the club had an official stance of not wanting cup runs, Pardew should hang his head in shame for signing an eight year deal were he knew he would never be allowed success.

Did anybody really like the old Ashley? Can’t think of anybody off hand myself. We can at least tolerate the new one, as long as he stays behind the scenes and sticks to his word, can’t we? He’s not going anywhere soon after all. Imo, the club is definitely trying – so hard it’s actually a bit creepy if I’m honest. Still, it’s what we asked for, so I can sit and wait and see how things develop, whilst actually believing, for the first time under Ashley, that their is change in the air. That opinion can always alter, mind you, it ain’t set in stone. 🙂

It’s funny how people are giving credit to Mikey or Churners for removing a pair of clowns that they appointed in the first place. I wonder what my neighbours would say if I bricked in my front windows then replaced them six months later after they’d put up with the sight of plywood and blue tarpaulin in the meantime !

Links and quotes? I’ll leave that to people who know what they’re doing, I’m a kind of technophobe. It was during an interview, when he was talking about the transfer window, and what he had to spend. It went something like ‘I like what we’ve spent so far and we’ll continue to spend on the right players, when they become available. We’ve spent 50 mil so far. Would I have liked to spend the full 150 mil in one window? Maybe, maybe not.’ I don’t know the links, but I know many of you saw it, as it was discussed in length. Just because I can’t link it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Nobody from the club has contradicted him, whereas Charnley also talked about big investment over the next two windows.

I’ll predict how this will go.
It will be *we are spending 50 million at Christmas…rejoice, rejoice*
If it doesn’t happen, people will ask where the 50 million is.
And they will be slated as whingers and told nobody in their right minds believed that, along with copious denials from bloggers that they ever said any such thing.

BobbyBee,
The other day I typed up a post with some well known quotes from people who claim that they dislike Mashers while defending his every move, while I was typing it you were typing a stereotypical post of disliking him while sticking up for him, spooky !

There are 2 interviews on NUFCtv where he mentions £150 million in total but I can’t find either of them on Youtube.
If you refuse to put any money into Mike Ashleys coffers then you are going to have to take our word for it 😎

BoobyBee,
“By this time next season the squad should look totally different.” “Did I want to spend £150M in this window? Absolutely.”
All he says is that he would have like to have spent £150M, no wonder some people everything that’s written in the sun !

Jail, as I’ ve repeatedly said, I don’t like or dislike Ashley, because I don’t know him. I disliked things he has done, but then, I’m liking what he’s doing now. You can change an opinion of somebody, you do get that don’t you? Nobody will laugh at you – nor more than they already do, anyway. It’s becoming tedious trying to penetrate your skull if I’m really truthful. Politics, I have no interest in. All I care about is the football club I support. When somebody does something to hurt the club, I get annoyed. If they do something I like, I might even praise them. I am not an Ashley lover, or an Ashley hater. I take each action he does on its own merits and judge accordingly. You, on the other hand, with your melodramtic name, hate him regardless. That, is your problem, not mine. No doubt you’ve never done a thing wrong in your life and never will because you’re so perfect. Things have definitely changed, like it or not. Until they change again, I’m reasonably happy with the current situation. Therefore, I give Ashley very little thought, except the time I’m on here. My original post was a light hearted observation – as was pointed out at the time. Lighten up, you might be right one day.

Bobby,
I had never heard of Mike Ashley until he turned up at our club, I though he was the best thing since sliced bread until it became obvious that he had no intention of making us successful but was here to further his SD business, I have no problem with advertising his brand, even for free if we were trying to compete, if we are now being run as a football club rather than a billboard then I have no problem with Mike Ashley.

martoon- It’s been said – that with managers it’s not just the moments of genius that mark them out as something special- it’s the lack of mistakes and embarrassing times.
The only time I thought Pardew should have been sacked was when he brought the club into disrepute over the head butting incident.
On your speaking up for Ashley point- it goes under my “tidal wave of nonsense type posts”. Given the lack of communication( at that time) with no PR speak, Pardew
frequently fulfilled the role- for me too much was read into it. Maybe it should have been kept private but then rumours grow from tittle tattle to something more significant.

Jail, just reread your post. No, wrong again. He said he would like to spend THE 150 mil, not just 150 mil. You even alter direct quotes to suit your petty little agendas. Let’s all alter our names in a childish manner, shall we? I’m now boobybee apparently – ouch ow, it hurts SO MUCH. You on the other hand, are now Fail, not jail, a name that suits you far better. Anybody else want to play his silly game?

“Charlie Austin claims Newcastle move ‘wasn’t right’ for him”
NO!
No he did not, never mentioned Newcastle once – nor have NUFC or QPR – it is magical information channelled by Journalists; [and dreamed by ED].

“I remember the first week I was here and the conversations we had, and looking at the squad and the next three windows and thinking ‘Can we not have all of that now?’.

“It’s been impossible to do that. But I am excited about this because it’s not just about now, but about the next two windows as well. By this time next season the team, the squad should, I hope, look totally different. Did I want to spend £150 million in this window? Absolutely. That’s not been possible. But we have spent wisely, on quality, if not quantity. It’s a very good start, a very good base.”

McClarens quote around the 150 mill…doesn’t actually say that’s how much he has to spend over 3 windows. Wiggle room with NUFC? No can’t be

I thought the ref, Marriner, had a decent game. I heard someone on Talk Sport or somewhere saying exactly the same and in particular that the only major thing he got wrong was not giving Arsenal a penalty. But Ian Wright’s comments are ridiculous. Ideas like his will spell the death of the game. If referees can’t take stick from the crowd, whether they deserve it or not, they’re in the wrong job.

That’s one of the first sensible things I’ve seen you post. Ironically, I didn’t trust Ashley and wondered why he’d bought the club! Which resulted in my looking for theories and concluding he wanted the ground, until I found out he couldn’t have it. 🙂 I have passionately disliked some of his decisions – bordering on hatred – but some of them have been based on business so it seems. I’m 58 and want us to win something domestic before I die and I don’t care who funds it. Let him put his money in, about time too. I’m pretty sure he didn’t want his tat empire associated with failure, so what’s happening now makes sense to me. He tried doing it his way – the way he’s been successful at – but football ain’t like his other projects, so he’s listened to advice – hoorah! – and is trying to succeed another way, with football people in charge. It makes sense, unlike some of his more bizarre actions in the past. I just want a team that allows me to dream and I think we’re moving towards that now. We all make mistakes and he’s made some whoppers, but if he’s trying to put it right, I can get passed that and look forward.

I said what? We would win CL? Behave yourself making up crap. CL is way beyond us. A cup would suit me ffs. How does it go? Show me posts and links where i said that! 🙂 Macca signed up because of the exciting plans he’d seen spelt out To him, which included money available for transfers. I believe him, so I don’t have to trust Ashley.

In honor of two dedicated Newcastle fans, who lost their lives supporting Newcastle United.

Their passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday July 17th, 2014 by rebels, as they were traveling to support the team in New Zealand.

We will never forget them.

Health Update - 4 Aug, 2016

The good news last week was that after more blood tests my PSA count is still undetectable

This means the prostate cancer is still under control, and there is no trace of it in the body.

Now to be even more vigilant so I can see the Rafa Benitez project come to its fruition over the next few years - wouldn't want to miss that.

Howay The Lads!!>

Ed Harrison

What Is A Football Club?

What is a club in any case?

Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it.

It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes.

It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city.

It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.